Film Poster

A film poster is an important tool when advertising a film. It has to reflect the style of film to attract the target audience to the film. The poster has to include certain elements of the film but not reveal any key plot/narrative devises/turning points. It must have a tag line that becomes synonymous with the film and is able to tease the potential audience. 

Example of Film Poster That are Effective.

Film Poster Analysis

Production 

This is a teaser trailer for my film. It had a strong enigma surrounding it and showed the main aspects of the film. As a teaser trailer I thought it was good as it didn't give to much away so it wouldn't spoil the film. I thought the name was effective but it sounded like the wrong type of genre. The name would be better suited to a police/crime genre. None of the plot is revealed but the setting is.

This is often done in Hollywood where a film poster is released showing a small part of the plot and then a number of months later a full poster and trailer are released. To create this poster I used Adobe after photo shop.

This has tools such as the magic wand which is able to detect similar colours and allow you to delete them at will.

This was another first attempt at a film poster. This is far from finished as there are no film credits and the font above the title is difficult to read and is also not the right font/size.

I liked the canted angle in this shot as it had a strong enigma surrounding it. The canted angle also makes it look as if gravity has shifted. While this is a good effect it has little relevance to my film so I decided that his would be an insignificant poster.

While still working with at long shot of the pool I went for a simple landscape and added the text, credits and a certificate. This was the original image with no colour correct and no effects added to it. This laid the foundation for my next poster.

This poster makes use of the auto contrast, brightness, and colourisation that Photoshop offers. This quick method is effective because it has set levels that it adjusts to. This means it will achieve a more effective finish.                                                
The blacking out of the two main characters at the end of the pool was more difficult. To achieve this I used the magnetic lasso. This uses colour gradients to select a certain singular object. I selected the characters one by one and moved them to their own separate layers. For each of the layers I turned the brightness down and the contrast up. This made the images turn dark but not completely black. This once again used the enigma code to surround this film in mystery. I also added the names of the actors "TOM HAWNEY JAMES WATERHOUSE" and the tag line "SECRETS LIE WITHIN". The font was chosen because of it s maze like design. This connotes the twists and turns that will be in my film. The font for the title "EXTRACTION" was Ariel. I wanted their to be an element of simplicity and this would be achieved with this. If it was too complicated or flashy then audiences would struggle to read it and this would mean they wouldn't know what the name was and thus not be able to search for it. 

After font experimentation I used a focus group to make sure the decision I was making was the right one. 

Afte the focus groups positive feedback I went with the Ariel font. Some of the comment I received about the other fonts where: "It is the clearest font, it is easy to read unlike most of the other fonts". 

While this design was good, I had to keep changing the font sizes and positioning. Due to the colour of the top half of my picture the text had to be moved constantly because other wise the names of the actors become impossible to read. To try and over come this problem I used the FX option in Photoshop to use the dropped shadow effect.This makes it seem as if it is above the photo and almost has another dimension to it. It also made it much clearer for the audience to read.

Often with real media products the names of the actors are used to make people want to see the film. This is only done with significant actors such as Robert Downey JR, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc. It is not often done with smaller not as well known actors. For my poster I wanted to use the actors names as a selling point for the film but not the main point. I wanted people to see my film for what it was, not for the people that were in it.

      

Other Designs.

While this poster is effective it once again means little to my film. It is not black and white and this once again makes it seem as if it is in the film noir genre. It fails to reflect the style of my film and could make the audience think it is a different style of film.

Final One

This was a very drastic change from my other posters. Despite the amount of change I felt it was necessary as there were several flaws in the others.

These were:

• The film credits where difficult to read.
• The actors names were not clear or visible.
• The film certificate was too high so much of my target audience would be unable to see the film.
• The actors were to far away from the foreground and this went against film poster conventions. 

The poster is very stylised. While style of poster has not been seen much the artistic look is becoming increasingly popular in mainstream film. As in the re-lease of the Star Wars film "The Empire Strikes Back", the poster featured a completely artistic drawing of one of the main characters. While this is still not mainstream it is becoming increasingly popular with film directors as they are having to find different ways to attract audiences to go and see there films.
In my new poster I had all the conventions of a film poster from a similar genre.

Summary of my Posters development

Examples of Styalised  Film Posters: